Inbetween Days (8 page)

I looked up. Swinging from a thick, horizontal branch about four metres above my head was a glass bottle. Inside it, a roll of paper. The bottle seemed to hover, suspended by the same transparent fishing line I'd traced to the spot.

I let my breath go and stumbled back. Weak legs, tingling fingers, thumping heart. Trudy said I couldn't change anything; she'd warned me about what I might see. Climbing that tree would have taken agility and strength—but it was only a bottle.

The anger bubbled up, as it always did.
This is my home.

I sensed movement—nothing I could see or hear but real enough. I listened, picking through the shadows layer by layer, searching for a source. Beyond a cluster of feral blackberry, I saw it: an unnatural shape amongst the vertical lines of the trees. I took a few slow steps to my right to get a better look. I could make out the shape of a two-man tent—and one man, thin and messy-looking with a goatee and a ponytail, staring straight at me. I jumped, but I wasn't scared. He appeared so slight, so
beaten
, the wind could have carried him away.

‘I'm Jacklin. I live here,' I said fiercely, marching towards him.

He seemed to consider whether or not he'd answer. ‘Pope,' he said, after a long pause. ‘Just passing through.' He turned his back and busied himself, using a branch to sweep the patch of dirt around the tent. ‘You can follow the line back out. You know where it is.'

‘I know my way out.'

How long had he known I was there?

He ignored me.

‘Why are you here?'

He shook his head and paused with a hand on his hip. ‘Camping. Not that it's any of your business.'

His gaze swung my way again.

‘There are better facilities down that way.' I pointed. ‘No power or showers, but there's water and a toilet block.'

‘I don't need any facilities.'

‘You're not allowed to camp this far up. I'll have to tell the ranger and he'll give you a fine.'

He smiled then. It made him seem gentle and very sad. ‘I'd appreciate it if you didn't. I'll be gone soon. I'll leave everything the way I found it, promise. Nobody will even know I was here.' He gave an awkward scout's honour–style salute.

‘I'll know. Please.' I knew I sounded desperate. ‘I'll show you where the campsite is. I'll help you pack up.'

This was too big for me.

I could have passed for twenty-one, but I felt twelve again. I guessed he was about ten years older, closer to Trudy's age than mine. I should have headed back the way I came and taken him at his word; Ma was right about not getting involved. The last thing I needed was more responsibility.

‘Is that your car? The white one, down in the car park?' I babbled.

He nodded.

‘If it's there much longer they'll start looking for you.' I glanced behind me to where the bottle hung, swinging ever so slightly. ‘Why are you doing this?'

Something seemed to click. His thoughtful expression turned sharp. ‘Are you trying to save me, Jacklin?'

‘Yes,' I blurted. ‘I would like that very much.'

‘I'll tell you what. You can come back every day to check on me if it makes you feel better. I'll be here—not hurting anybody, not lighting fires or skinning rabbits or trampling the flora—just here, quietly sweeping my patch and reading my book. Is that okay with you? And one day I won't be here anymore and you can stop worrying. Sound okay?'

The urge to get out of there was too strong. I backed up, tripping over the fishing line, which was tethered to his tent pole. The tent sagged and he rushed to re-peg it.

‘There are mine shafts everywhere,' I called, treading backwards along the track.

‘I've seen the signs.'

‘Mudslides, sometimes, if we get a lot of rain.'

He glanced up. ‘Blue skies, Miss Jacklin. Blue skies.'

My last glimpse, before I rounded a bend and the shadows took him, was of his face, lifted to catch the weak shafts of light breaking over Pryor Ridge, and his hand, reaching to touch the beams.

That night I thought about him and it rained a steady, drumming rain.

CHAPTER SEVEN

On Saturday morning I woke to a strange, violet sky with mottled clouds. The forest was pink and streaky from rain. As always, I arrived early to open up the roadhouse. My key didn't fit the lock. Astrid was already there and she took her sweet time letting me in, holding up one finger in the air to signal that she was busy, she'd be there in a minute.

So I waited and waited and I got angry. I stepped back into the street so I could look up at the windows of the flat, but the blinds were still closed. Alby could barely change his own mind let alone a set of locks. It was Astrid's fault—first she left me on her verandah and closed the door in my face, and now she was leaving me standing on the street while she took over my life. She was probably grifting the till. How many changes could one person make in five days? I'd never taken sick leave before and I vowed I'd never do it again. I ran my fingernails through the white letters of the weekly specials chalked on the window. Everybody did it—those special signs never lasted a week
.

Screeeeech
. Toilet paper, five bucks for a twenty-four pack.
Screeeeech
. Twenty cents a roll. Four packs in a carton. Forty cartons, ninety-six rolls per pack, three thousand, eight hundred and something rolls in…

‘Astrid, open the door!' I yelled and smacked the glass with the flat of my hand.

Astrid jumped and scurried over, fumbling with her keys—
her
keys, with a grinning picture of her Cabbage Patch Kid hanging from them. She got the door open, dragged me inside by the elbow, then stepped outside to look up and down the street.

‘Jesus, keep your pants on!' she snarled.

Bent Bowl Spoon smelled different inside, like rancid coconut oil, instead of its familiar pong of putrid fruit. I didn't like it. I couldn't even tell where the smell was coming from—I imagined it steaming up from some foul entity summoned by the rotten aura I was emanating. To top it off, at that moment I remembered I'd forgotten to feed the cat the night before. It was probably because I'd been picturing the guy in the forest, sandwiched between layers of mud, like one of Jeremiah's fossils.

‘Why'd you change the locks?'

‘Alby couldn't find his set, so that only left yours. We couldn't get in so we called a locksmith. The locks were over thirty years old—it was easier to replace them.'

‘Why'd you move the checkouts?'

‘Alby did it for me,' she said.

‘Why?'

‘I keep telling you. I always whack my hip trying to squeeze into mine. Yours has more space, so we moved it over.' She pulled down the waistband of her skirt. ‘Bruises, see?'

I eyed her suspiciously.

‘It's good to have you back.' She tried to smile and stood too close. ‘This place isn't the same without you.'

Why did that sound so ominous? She was just Astrid, my friend.

‘Where'd my toilet paper display go?'

Astrid shrugged an apology. ‘It fell down. You nearly killed a customer. They're stacked along the back wall.'

I wandered along aisle two to the rear of the roadhouse. Where the racks of empty cartons used to be stood a wall of white. At a rough guess, there were at least thirty diamonds hidden under there.

‘You've been busy,' I said, but Astrid was gone. Why was she being like this? Why did she have to change everything?

Somewhere upstairs, her new keys jangled. I hated the sound, like a cheese-grater on my nerves. Next to my checkout, taped to the column, there was a carefully typed list of procedures I'd been carrying out successfully since I'd worked there without a fucking list—at the bottom, Alby's scrawled initials and a smiley face, presumably Astrid's.

I spent the next two hours moving every single packet of toilet paper back to the front of the roadhouse. It had to be done—only the everyday things in my life were holding it together.

I started rebuilding my display. Astrid said nothing, but her sighs came at a rate of about one every two minutes. This time I went one better, spanning two aisles with an arch of epic proportions, supported by two flimsy bridges of flattened cardboard. The arches sagged in the middle, but held.

When I had finished, I sat on top of the stepladder and counted the packets to make sure they were equal on both sides. I became aware that I had an audience.

‘Twice in a week,' I said without taking my eyes from the display. ‘You never used to shop here, Roly.'

‘Ode de toilette,' Jeremiah mused in his deep, deep voice.

‘Jeremiah needed a laxative suppository,' Roly stated, staring at my great white behemoth in awe. ‘It's a portent. You're uncanny, Jack.'

‘Roly needed a packet of cancer,' Jeremiah said. ‘You know, if you interlocked the packets the whole structure would be more stable.' He scratched at his chin. ‘That cardboard will weaken through the creases. A buttress could work.'

I came down from the ladder backwards, missed the bottom step and landed in Jeremiah's arms. He set me upright like I was a salt shaker.

Astrid appeared, carrying two more packets of toilet paper. ‘You missed a couple,' she said and laughed, but I could tell the difference between her plastic laugh and her real one.

‘A buttress will transfer the downward force of the arch into the column. Like this.' Jeremiah took a pen and notepad from behind my checkout and started sketching. ‘It's rudimentary, but you get the idea.'

‘Silence, wretch! The flapping of your gums wearies me,' Roly interrupted, holding up a hand.

‘Go on,' I said.

Roly snapped his fingers. ‘Let's go, J.
Yoo-hoo
.'

Jeremiah only frowned and kept writing his notes.

‘Help. J's fallen down the well again.'

‘Jack, we really should be getting back to work,' Astrid warned. ‘I'll just add these.'

She went up the ladder before I could stop her, placed the last two packets and all of her weight (I could swear) onto the fragile bridge above aisle two. As the display came down, she teetered on the top step, and dived elegantly into the carnage.

Jeremiah stopped drawing.

Roly had a nice view of Astrid's knickers and took his time hauling her out.

‘Are you okay?' I asked.

‘I told you! It won't work. You nearly killed me!' Her face was flushed and pretty. Her expression was mean.

‘I'm sorry.'

Jeremiah said, ‘Toilet paper isn't hazardous…statistically speaking.'

If I so much as twitched my bottom lip in the hint of a smile, she would scratch my eyes out. I bit it instead.

Astrid backed up and regarded me from a safe distance. ‘Alby says he has to let one of us go. But don't tell him I told you. He'll want to say something to you himself.'

So that was it: she was worried about losing her job. I wouldn't be the one to go—I was indispensable. I minded the shop, and the old man. I was a good girl. These changes had been sneaky acts of sabotage; I had to mark and defend my territory, like the time Trudy and I had to share her room for two months and Trudy divided the room using a strip of tape. The battle lines were drawn. Astrid was flaky, disorganised and occasionally dishonest, with legs up to her armpits and a knack for divining truth, and now I didn't like her. I didn't like her at all.

Jeremiah was still waiting, his pencil poised above the paper.

‘I was here first,' I said. ‘Show me that buttress thing again.'

After Roly and Jeremiah had gone, Astrid just about took the skin off the floor tiles, scrubbing them with bleach. Big mistake—only the dirt was holding them in place. I watched but didn't comment. It was the kind of job that only got bigger once you'd started, and it kept her busy while I served the odd customer and catalogued all the things she'd messed with.

She had hung a male nude calendar in the ladies' toilet; I gave the boys some dignity by using a permanent marker to draw them tuxedos. I nudged my checkout a few inches closer to its original position. Astrid's, too. I ripped up the new procedure list and tossed it into the bin where she'd see it. I ate her yoghurt from the staff fridge. We worked without speaking for nearly four hours and neither of us acknowledged the mess of toilet paper, still lying where it had fallen. The stench of bleach had almost covered up the new coconut smell, but I found myself inhaling over a crate of oozing peaches.

In the afternoon, Alby came down and asked me to look after Mr Broadbent while he ran some errands. I didn't mention what Astrid had said. I didn't ask for the last week's pay either, although I'd noticed Astrid had paid her staff account in full.

Alby stared at the toilet paper. ‘You need to clean that up. It's not safe.'

Astrid threw me the darkest look but nodded sweetly. ‘I told her, but there's no telling some people. I'll do it.
Again
.' She walked off, hips swaying, skirt short.

Alby watched. ‘You're a good girl, Astrid.'

A full-body tremble started somewhere in my knees.

‘I have a boyfriend,' I told Mr Broadbent.

He was wearing loose cotton pyjamas, worn through at the elbows, and sat slumped in an armchair that looked like a distended organ growing out of his bony back. I'd played classical music on the radio for a while but he didn't seem to be listening. I switched the channel back to rock.

‘He's older. Not old-old, but, you know. I'll be eighteen in less than a year and then it won't matter.'

He didn't blink. I pushed pieces of sandwich between his lips and he gummed them, slowly and carefully.

‘Astrid is swinging her hips for Alby so she can stay. That's so cheap, don't you think? Trudy was right about her—she's only out for herself.'

His expression didn't change. He didn't understand what I was saying anyway—even better, he didn't talk back. I had a lot to say and no one to tell, so it was perfect.